So, it seems fitting that I am riding backwards on the train from Busan to Seoul. At first, when I sat down, I was nervous about how my tummy has gotten really motion sensitive in my old age. But, after I realised I was being silly, I settled into my luxurious window seat next to a man in a sweater vest. I put on some acoustic jams and started looking. And, when you go forward on the train, you have a feeling of arrival, "I've got my big girl pants on. I am going places and doing stuff!!" But, going backwards has a distinct feeling of departure. Things stay in my line of vision until they disappear. I watched my city, my home slip out of my vision to The Weepies, silently replacing the high rises with rambling hills and a snow capped mountainscape.
It seems fitting that I am wearing my big girl pants. I AM going places and doing stuff. I'm wearing an outfit and personality completely different from the dress and curls clad woman who came to Korea not four years ago. I grew up here. I acquired a taste for dapper ties and snap backs, dry red wine and meaningful conversations. It is best when all four of those things happened at the same time!
It seems fitting that all of my possessions are either in a box or in a back pack. My clothes and books are in transit, much like myself. Moving from place to place, check points and safely landing on my mother's doorstep. My immediate possessions (including the game time addition of Rainbow Bunny) rest in a back pack looking down on me from the luggage rack. The world will be my classroom. Literal geography class moving country to country. Quick math for currency and science conversion. The science of people, culture, oceans, and mountains. History is everywhere. I am the student. I feel like a kindergartner on my first day of school. Kinda ready, kinda scared. Hoping that people like me and don't make fun of my polka dot and stripe overall shorts.
It seems fitting that this post seems a bit unfinished. It isn't my usual first-second-third-fourth-finally published draft of thoughts carefully crafted to note exactly how I want the world to perceive my emotions. I wrote this in one shot on the train. I arrive in ten minutes and I am not ready to finish this post. I am not ready to say goodbye to the people I've met here. I am not ready to live in a place without mountains and oceans. I am not ready.
Or maybe I am. Maybe I am ready, just scared. Just happy. Just sad. Just excited. Maybe I am all of these things. And, maybe, just maybe, that is okay.
